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A crusading television documentarian has died. Ofra Bikel was 94 years old. Her work for the PBS show "Frontline" won many awards and transformed the lives of her subjects, especially those wrongfully convicted of serious crimes. NPR's Neda Ulaby has more.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Ofra Bikel had a wildly interesting life, even before she started making documentary television.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Tonight on Frontline...
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ULABY: Born in Israel, Bikel studied law and political science at The Sorbonne. She moved to the United States, where she was briefly married to actor Theodore Bikel, known for playing the lead role of Tevye in the Broadway musical, "Fiddler On The Roof."
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THEODORE BIKEL: (Singing) If I were a rich man, ya ba dibba dibba (ph)...
ULABY: But Ofra Bikel took a very different professional path. As a journalist, she produced and directed dozens of episodes of one of the top TV programs dedicated to long-form investigations.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Tonight on Frontline, an ordinary crime...
ULABY: Bikel chose her own topics. They ranged from political problems in Poland and the United Kingdom to child sexual abuse in the United States.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: It would be an understatement to say this small northeastern North Carolina town is scandalized by the Little Rascal (ph) Day Care case.
ULABY: Bikel spent nearly a decade making three documentaries about the Little Rascal Day Care case. Seven defendants were charged with crimes against children. Bikel exposed the shoddy evidence and legal improprieties that led to their arrests. All seven were eventually released.
In the years that followed, Bikel continued making documentaries that helped free even more people wrongly accused of crimes.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: ...An open-and-shut case.
ULABY: In an NPR interview in 2002, Ofra Bikel defended laws that gave her access to incarcerated people. Without interviewing them, she said, they could be there forever.
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OFRA BIKEL: Because they were all lifers, they would still be there if I couldn't go in. If they - it's not if I couldn't go in - if I couldn't bring what they said to the public.
ULABY: Bikel brought story after story to the public with a tiny staff, just usually a few eager young producers. One was Karen O'Connor, who remembered her mentor like this.
KAREN O'CONNOR: Tough as nails, old-school hard - all those things.
ULABY: But generous, O'Connor said - with the young people she worked with and pretty much everyone else.
O'CONNOR: Her phone number was listed.
ULABY: That meant so many people would call who had a loved one in prison. They begged Ofra Bikel to investigate.
O'CONNOR: And she would take the calls. And she never stopped.
ULABY: She cared and she kept up, O'Connor says, with her former subjects.
O'CONNOR: She wouldn't just do the film and move on. She would then call. How are you now? What happened? What's with the family? What else is going on? She meant it.
ULABY: O'Connor says Ofra Bikel did not see her subjects as subjects. To her, they were people.
Neda Ulaby, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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